Kuwait once again bans Bangladeshi workers

BD News : Kuwait has once again imposed a ban on recruiting workers from Bangladesh, local media reports say.

The restrictions come months after the Gulf nation reopened its manpower market for Bangladesh on certain conditions, including one that says the employer must own a house, reports the Kuwait Times.

It said the interior ministry took the decision on Monday.

Undersecretary Assistant for Citizenship and Passports Affairs Sheikh Mazen Al-Jarrah made the decision after viewing ‘statistics which showed that the number of the Bangladeshi community in Kuwait reached 200,000 as of the end of last week’, says the report published on Wednesday.

Kuwait Times said Mazen did not give details on whether they would reconsider the decision or would announce more conditions to regulate the recruitment.

According to the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training in Bangladesh, Kuwait started hiring Bangladeshi workers in 1976. Until 2007, around 480,000 workers have gone there.

Kuwait stopped recruiting Bangladeshi workers in 2007 after ‘detecting irregularities in recruitment and their involvement in illegal activities’.